Moss Side hope as gang chiefs are taken off the street

In court they were cocky and defiant, smirking at the families of two men they had murdered and telling the judge that his proceedings were a circus.

But Colin Joyce, the self-styled "General" of Manchester's notorious Gooch Gang and his lieutenants are expected to appear shortly in a different guise - portrayed on posters as they are likely to look in 30 to 40 years' time when they leave jail.

The images are part of a police and community drive to build on an unprecedented fall in Manchester's longstanding blight of gun crime after the gang's arrest, remand and six-month trial, which ended this week.

There have been no gang-related killings in the city for a year and shootings between the rival groups in Moss Side, less than a mile and a half from the city centre, fell from 38 in 2007 to three last year.

No one is getting carried away, given the tenacious grip of gun culture in Manchester's past, but Moss Siders feel that change is running more deeply than the police's work in winning convictions for the 11-strong leadership of the Gooch Gang, five of whom were jailed for life.

"People are standing up and saying, we don't want this any more, and the young people are taking notice," says Patsy McKie, whose son Dorrie was shot dead 10 years ago, aged 20, in a gang-related row over a bike. "The police are doing their job but that shouldn't take all the credit. There's been a change in attitudes too." The shift is best-detected at meeting-places such as the Powerhouse youth centre, where teenagers hang out and drop in to the Talking Library, a succession of role models who chat about how they avoided the teenage glamour of gangs. Mark Sumners, who had a drive-by shooting the day he took over as director two years ago, says: "The young people are involved themselves in organising that. They've also helped set up a construction day for local building employers next week."

Apprenticeships are expected to follow from that, helping form a counter-culture to peer pressure from gangland which the jailing of 29-year-old Joyce and his associates has also eased. The Gooch Gang was so self-confident that members raided a sports hall with a sub-machine gun when community police officers were giving a talk in the room next door. Rivals were shot over trivial disputes, all sustained by a growing drug-dealing empire.

No one disagreed when Judge Brian Longstaff, jailing Joyce for 39 years at Liverpool crown court this week, told him and the other gang members, who got almost 200 years between them: "You were all involved in activity reminiscent of Al Capone and Chicago in the era of prohibition. Manchester is not the Wild West, but many of you treated its streets as if it were."

The downfall of the gang, named after a street in their stronghold on the Alexandra Park estate, came in 2007 when they murdered a man linked to the rival Longsight Crew, 24-year-old Ucal Chin, and then shot dead 23-year-old Tyrone Gilbert at Chin's wake. A balaclava snagged on wire gave police DNA but, equally important, witnesses defied intimidation to speak out.

"That was crucial," says Moss Side Labour councillor Alistair Cox, who also chairs Manchester's scrutiny committee for children's and youth services. "People had been very frightened, understandably. But witness protection schemes and an absolute transformation in policing have changed that."

The police strategy, which includes 1,800 stop-and-searches without recorded complaint, was launched as Operation Cougar in February last year. It built on previous work given priority and funded by former chief constable Michael Todd.

Police spotters are on the streets watching for tension, CCTV has increased greatly and stop-and-search is considered vital.

The community has the "best understanding" about how to stop young people becoming the next generation of gang members, says current chief constable Peter Fahy.

Patsy McKie is optimistic about the future. "It's also a chance to convince everyone else that Moss Side isn't a bad place to live at all," she says - encouraging new residents, shoppers, businesses and students from Manchester's universities, which are partly in the ward. "It's always been the case that the people who are most frightened of it are the people who don't live here."